Our very own Little LoveSpring (also known as Wedding-stock) — 29 days of same sex marriage bliss — has come to an end. We here in San Francisco are going to miss it.
It’s time for the lawyers to take over the gay marriage fight. Time to put away the flowers and the tuxedoes and the hastily bought wedding dresses. The guys and gals in the nicely cut grey cashmere suits will be at this for a good long time. And while I’m no attorney, I’d say you can look for the San Francisco cases to hit the U.S. Supreme Court in about a year – well after the election but in time to have a further beneficial effect on San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s political future. No matter what the courts decide,he wins.

The constant weddings cheered everyone, not just San Francisco’s boring, pretty much already married (except for the legal papers) gay and lesbian couples. It was just a nice little shot in the arm for a city that’s been struggling to regroup, economically and culturally, since the dot.com collapse. It brought everyone – long time residents who remember Harvey Milk and tech savvy newcomers who stay here because of the city’s funky tolerance; not to mention the fantastic weather we’ve been having for the past two weeks – together around the idea that this city could once again lead the country to follow its more Liberal instincts.
Newsom’s got all kind of political capital to throw around. So, if nothing else, the high-pitched screaming that used to pass for political discussion around here has gone down a notch. It’s hard to talk about Republican class warfare when the guy you’re hurling accusations against has gone mano a mano with our Republican muscle-man governor and our Top Gun President over same sex couples getting legal protections all the while he’s getting a tax increase out of the business community.
As for conservatives, what, in the rest of the world, are called moderates, Newsom is as good as the downtown businesses are going to get. And everyone knows it. So the city’s business community will swallow a tax increase; barring some super sudden outbreak of prosperity, they’re going to have to. Newsom looks like he’s going to really have to get behind the multi-billion housing bond issue expected to be on the November ballot and that could be a property tax increase for city residents. But if he does both these things – and succeeds using the good will he’s accumulated this winter – the city’s Lefty progressives will have to rethink almost every aspect of their strategy.